BY: SALEH MAIDOKI
One ridiculous and ill-perceived piece with the above caption written by Ibrahim Musa on an online Daily Nigerian newspaper of Sunday 19th November, 2023, calls for this rejoinder to put record straight. And to also make clear how inept and brain-blocked his submission appears. Enjoy the reading.
To begin with, the writer goofed in the first sentence of the first paragraph, which is a blatant display of contradiction and confused understanding of two political positions, when he said “…Kano politics has been radical and non-aligned.” “Radical” and “non-aligned” are two different dispositions, each challenging the other, in political parlance.
It appears the writer doest not even know what Non-aligned movement is at the global space. In the cold War setting, Radical movement represents left wing (socialist-communist states), Conservative movement represents right wing (capitalist-imperialist states) and Non-aligned movement explains those global states that are neither here nor there, as global media organizations like BBC call them “Yan Ba-ruwanmu.”
To show you how the author, Musa, lacks understanding of his subject of discussion, in just nearby paragraph two of his piece, he says, “For Kanawa, politics has a deeper meaning and purpose- and both are aligned to emancipation of talakawa (masses).” This contradiction and confusion in the understanding of the issue at hand is so glaring that he cannot even sieve two opposing political standpoints, aligned and non-aligned.
In his first paragraph he describes Kano as being “non-aligned” and immediately in the second paragraph he typifies Kano as being “aligned.” Only in Nigeria a person who doesn’t understand the concept at hand can raise head and erroneously or ignorantly, at best, can call himself an analyst. Deeply-rooted show of shame. So the analysis, if there is one, is misleading, unscientific, poorly engaging and incorrect from all standpoints.
In the third paragraph Musa said “If there is one thing Kano people will not condone is testing their will by imposition of unpopular candidate which they collectively rejected at the polls…And it is exactly where I see Tinubu failing to learn from the history.” This is totally misleading and being economical with the truth, calling Nasiru Yusu Gawuna of the All Progressives Congress (APC) “unpopular” candidate.
Even before the Election Petition Tribunal ruling and after, Gawuna has 890,705 votes cast in his favour. And none, not even Kwankwaso, Abba Gida-Gida or ANPP can prove anything short of this number at the Tribunal. Meaning Gawuna still maintains such huge number of votes. So I don’t know the parameters used by Musa to term Gawuna as unpopular candidate. Only when the writer, Musa, wants to be too elementary, rude and crude.
I am not even referring to Abba Kabir Yusuf votes at the initial stage, before Tribunal judgement of 1,019,602, which were reduced by 165,663 as verified by the competent Election Petition Tribunal to be invalid. As they were unsigned and unstamped. Leaving Abba with 853,939 votes as his “lawful” votes. So going by this reality and using your calculation, who among these gubernatorial candidates is unpopular? Ibrahim Musa I pity your naivety and arm-chair analysis syndrome.
I wonder what dynamics the author is trying to analyze, when he cannot even understand the cards on his palm. Somebody who doesn’t comprehend the gap between “aligned” and “non-aligned.” He sees these opposing political positions as identical, synonymous and interwoven. And he calls himself an analyst! Haba!
My friend should go back to school and study more about cold war era of global political development. So that he can understand the concept of non-aligned movement. His domestication of the concept is ignorantly displayed.
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I laughed profusely when I read the last part of his third paragraph, when he said, “If you go back a bit you would realise that Atiku, Obi and Kwankwaso (two opposition candidates from the North and one from the South) were all members of PDP, and combined their votes in 2023 surpassed Tinubu’s by a wide margin beyond any tricky manipulations. Technically, 2023 elections was won by the PDP had it not split its votes across LP and NNPP.”
Arm-chair analysis and hallucination of the highest order. Not a cursory look of this scenario, but looking at it critically with an informed mind, one can understand that, almost all the frontline politicians, who fought for Tinubu’s victory at the polls, were formerly PDP members. Gandujes, El-Rufa’is et al, were there, name them. So why the writer ignore this another great aspect and postulates that 2023 election was won by the PDP? If this sounds ridiculous, it is more ridiculous to go by the author’s half-baked explanation of the situation.
Not to talk of political fusion and re-fusion, political interest where strange bed-fellows fused together, for a purpose and for certain period of time- as permanent interest always supersedes permanent friend in politics- and the author fails to understand when Nigeria was drifting to one-party state. And it was PDP then. You remember?
In his fourth paragraph the author erroneously said, “Tinubu’s administration is unlikely to be popular…because of the economic hardship caused by its deliberate policies, such as removal of petrol subsidy…” This is embarrassing for a self-acclaimed analyst. Somebody who doesn’t even know who removed the oil subsidy and who announced the removal to the public. Mr Musa wake up from slumber wake up!
He is aptly and sufficiently confused. While condemning Tinubu administration, he is at the same time praising the administration for entrenching radical reform in the country. He said in paragraph four, “…it takes a while for a radical reform to get well entrenched and trickle down to generate shared prosperity.” Mr Analyst with a confusing mind!
The “divide and rule” strategy and its possible embedment posed by the writer is more or less elementary in approach. Let me show my readers another contradiction by Mr Musa, while he reminded how Bashir Othman Tofa, from Kano, was “jettisoned” by Kano people during 1993 Presidential election and opted for MKO Abiola from South, the writer, because of his inept analytical capacity and poverty of scientific comparison and ideas, he clearly states in the fifth paragraph that, “…we all know the sentiment in the North. The North will ALWAYS (emphasis mine) favour its own and can unite and fight together…”
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Another point of concern exposing Musa, the writer of the piece as naive and arm-chair analyst is when he said, in the fifth paragraph again that, “Tinubu’s ticket is already battling with the tag of excluding the vast Christian population.” My simple questions are, excluding them from what? Has the writer taken an inventory of Tinubu’s appointments so far along religious line? How many Christians are there and how many Muslims are on board? How many ‘juicy’ positions go to Christians and how many go to Muslims? Is like the writer is talking from the two sides of his mouth, full of naive understanding of the Nigerian politics, power play and governance.
He talks of his “…intervention will open the eyes of the strategists within the Tinubu’s camp to change their thoughts on ill thought judicial heist they are planning to stage in Kano.” I ask, which intervention? All the trashes the writer mentioned in his piece, are as useless as dust to an Asthmatic patient. You called that intervention (laughter)?
Saleh writes from Kano and can be reached at Email: Salehmaidoki@gmail.com